About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 20. Social Cognition

Abstract

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Children are exposed to a wide range of values in daily life. When they observe someone violating these rules, they may tattle (i.e., telling other people about the transgressors’ behaviors) to enforce the rules. They often tattle to authority figures, including teachers and parents (Ingram & Bering, 2010), whom they view as arbitrators. Previous studies have suggested that the type of rule violated, age, and culture could also affect children’s decision or evaluation of tattling (e.g., Chiu Loke et al., 2014).
The current study aimed to assess urban-rural difference in Chinese children’s evaluation of tattling and examine parental authoritarianism as a potential explanation for any difference. In line with Chiu Loke et al. (2014), we expected that rural children would be more likely to approve of tattling to an authority figure than urban children, as urban China was more oriented toward market economy and autonomous values than rural areas (Tang & Parish, 2000). We also expected that rural parents would endorse authoritarian values in parenting more than urban parents, and examined whether parental authoritarianism would explain differences in children’s rating of tattling.
We recruited 85 urban and 81 rural 5-6- and 8-10-year-old children in mainland China. Each child was presented with four vignettes where a child character violated a moral or conventional rule and another character observed the violation and told the teacher. Children were asked to evaluate the violation and the tattling, make personal decisions on whether to tell a teacher, and provide justifications. Parents filled out a four-question survey indicating how much they endorse authoritarian values in parenting and received a score ranging from 0 to 4.
A t-test showed that rural parents endorsed authoritarian values in parenting more than urban parents (t(164) = -6.42, p < .05). A mixed-effect ordinal logistic regression (with participant as a random effect) showed that violation type (β = -2.31, SE = .002, p < .001), age group (β = -1.03, SE = .25, p < .001) and location (β = 0.036, SE = .002, p < .001), in consistency with previous studies, were associated with children’s evaluation of tattling. We then included evaluation of violation and parental authoritarianism as additional fixed effects. We found that participants’ evaluation of tattling was negatively associated with their evaluation of the violation (β = -2.32, SE = .37, p < .001) and location no longer predicted their evaluation of tattling. Contrary to our expectation, parental authoritarianism was negatively associated with children’s approval of tattling (β = -0.38, SE = .18, p = .037). In other words, the more a parent endorsed authoritarian parenting styles, the less likely their child to approve of tattling to an authority figure when they saw someone violating a rule. Children with more authoritarian parents, despite valuing conformity to authority, are less likely to endorse autonomy and speaking up – likely because they were concerned with personal punishment. The results point to different mechanisms, on societal and familial levels, through which culture may influence children’s moral evaluations and decisions. Children’s justifications will be coded and analyzed to examine these interpretations.

Author information

Author	Role
Jingyi Xu, Boston University	Presenting author
Ran Wei, Grinnell College	Non-presenting author
Kathleen Corriveau, Boston University	Non-presenting author

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